Paint the Town Montana
by aykeikay
Summary: [modern AU] A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. Or vandalism, in the case of Shino and Hinata. Then again, it's only illegal if you get caught. And Kiba hopes he's the one to catch them so he can tell them how awesome they are.
1. Art Blocks, man, Art Blocks

**01  
Art blocks, man. Art blocks.  
**

* * *

Kiba's first thought was that he shouldn't have had that cheap and nasty energy drink that Naruto had shoved at him on his way out from work. It was bad enough that the sickly sweet fizzy drink gave him mini heart attacks when he was fully awake, now the liquid shit was making him see some weird shit since he was halfway to falling flat on his face and calling it a night on the dirty pavement.

He blinked once. Then again, because maybe it had hit him worse than he thought. Then he turned to fully face the thing that had caught his attention and actually looked at it.

His second thought was how he was going to find the asshole that screwed up a great piece of art.

On the wall of the alleyway that he took as a short cut home, unofficially named Artists Alley by the locals, was a tag. A weird looking sideways poop (or maybe it was a cloud. The fuck if he knew,) spray painted in the gaudiest shade of red he's ever seen, covered the wheatpaste poster of a wolf howling at the sun. Said poster had been there for almost a year, untouched by anything but the weather, and was one of his favourite pieces in the city.

Never mind that there were about a dozen of the same poster pasted all around Konoha, the fact that some shitstain out there though it was right and fair to paint some shitty pile of crap over something that was well liked by almost everyone who walked by, himself included, made him want to throw the jackass over Naka River Pass with a drum barrel full of gravel tied to their feet.

He wondered if the artist would feel the same if they saw what's happened to their work.

A buzzing in his jacket pocket interrupted petty revenge thoughts. _'Big Bitch'_ flashed on screen. Fuckin' Shippo's been renaming his contacts again. His Ma would probably try to whack him again if she saw the name assigned to her mobile number. Or if he didn't haul ass and get home soon.

Maybe she'll do it just for the sake of it. Nothing says love like a good kick up the ass, according to her.

"Yeah Ma."

"Don't you 'Yeah Ma' me, boy! Where are you?" Her voice cracked loudly over his half-brick phone. No hello, how was your day, did you take your lunch. Just straight to the point, no bullshit at all. Just like him.

"I'm on my way home now. I'm just waiting for the bus." Okay, he was still a five minute hike from the bus terminal and the bus home wasn't going to arrive for another fifteen, but Ma wouldn't know that.

"If you got the time, pick up some steak and chops for the dogs. Hana didn't tell me she fed the last of them to the boys this morning."

"Yeah, alright. Need anything else while I'm at the shops?"

"Nah we're good. And hurry home, boy, or you'll be eating a cold dinner."

"Yeah, yeah. Byeeeeeee." Kiba hung up before his mother could get another word in.

Well, there went his lovely stroll down rainbow road this cold, wet and miserable evening.

Granted, he would be cruising through this alley next Monday night and taking in all the awesome new stuff that would be up on its walls, the fact that the artists of the city worked so damn fast was what was ticking him off to begin with.

It's rare for anything to last more than a week without being half-buffed by another artist, or to be trashed by some half-assed tag. That the howling wolf poster had lasted for as long as it did was a once in a lifetime thing for this place. Kiba's only known two other pieces that hadn't been wrecked in any way, shape or form since they went up nearly three years ago, and it was only because there was no way in hell no one could get to them without the need for a fucking crane.

Though he would gladly kiss the feet of whoever it was who painted the orange Kyubi on top of the clock tower of Town Hall Station. That shit was rad as hell.

Sometimes he wished he could be part of it again.

Too bad _they_ had made it very clear what would become of him if he so much as even thought of picking up a paint marker or spray can again. A hole in the side of his guts would be the least of his worries when they would be through with him. Again.

Fuckin' assholes had run him off the streets over a stupid bit of wall space. The only reason he obeyed was so his Ma didn't have to spend her retirement fund to burn his sorry ass and bury the vase six feet under.

She probably would've forgone the burning part and thrown him in the nearest ditch if she ever found out what he was really doing that night the cops came knocking on their front door. It was just his luck that there was another asshole going around the city, beating up kids who were out and about at night. The cops had practically made up his cover story for him.

Plus he had a job and school to keep him occupied most of the time. Unless he learned to live without sleep, there was no way he was gonna be hanging around the streets anytime soon.

Though, the thought was very tempting, as he looks up at the white and blue Kusanese script that decorates the wall just beneath the edge of the roof.

 _'Awww fuck it, I'll come back later.'_ Kiba thought. It was getting late, it was cold, he was still in his ugly ass, high-vis work gear (fucking fluoro orange, man. Even Naruto hated his work gear, and orange was his favourite colour) and his Ma just might actually throw him over Naka River Pass with a drum barrel full of gravel if he misses his bus and gets home late.

Walking out of the alley, head down and mind far away, Kiba nearly bowled over a couple as they rounded the corner. Quick reflexes on his part saved the guy he ran into from getting a bruised ass. "Shit, sorry man. You alright?" he asked, steadying the young man. It took him a moment to realise that he had spoken in his traditional language, and nearly tripped over his tongue when he repeated it in the common language.

Reflective shades covered his eyes and his skin was an almost unhealthy pale, like he's never stepped out into the sunlight in his life. The girl with him was just as pale and her dark hair obscured the colour of her eyes. Like Kiba, the couple wore high-vis fluoro orange hooded jackets, insulated for cold weather . Under that, they both had the standard painter garb; white cotton shirt and pants with a generous amount of paint splattered all over them.

Huh. Didn't think a pair so pretty would've picked a tradie job as a career. They looked more like they belonged in some fancy university near the centre of the city. Then again, looks could be deceiving. Half of the guys he worked on site with though he was in his early twenties. And he sure as shit wasn't going to tell them that he was under aged, and without any proper tickets to do the job his aunts and cousins had set him up with. The shit he does for money.

"I am alright. Thank you." The young man said, picking up the bucket of paint he dropped. Lucky for him the lid didn't pop off from the impact and spill.

The girl muttered an apology to Kiba and the pair were off on their way down the alley. Yeah, he wouldn't wanna stick around for anything in this weather. He jogged the rest of the way to the bus terminal, tool belt clanking against him every so often. At least his ugly ass, high-vis work gear was good for keeping in body heat when it was meant to.

"Cash or card?" The bus driver asked to the boarding passengers. Kiba dug through his pockets for his wallet, where Aunty Senaka's travel card took up the photo ID slot. It was times like this he had his car. Stupid Ude and Ashi and their fuckin' road trip.

He froze when he couldn't feel the other occupant of his left pocket.

"My phone!" he screeched, tearing from the bus, knocking a few commuters aside to get out. _Fuck fuck shit fuck shiiiiiit_ if he lost that half-brick piece of crap, his Ma would definitely skin him alive and throw his carcass to the dogs.

Where in the name of fuck could he have dropped it! He was only on the phone to his Ma a few minutes ago in-!

Bolting full speed down the street, tool belt clanking with each step, he prayed to The Origin and Mother of All that his crappy half-brick junk of a mobile phone was in Artists Alley. Or else he could kiss his ass goodbye.

Skidding to a stop, he went down on all fours looking for his phone. Of all the fucking places to lose it, it had to be in the section of the city where anything dropped was considered fair game by anyone with sticky fingers. Even if something wasn't worth any money, if it wasn't bolted down, it was up for grabs.

"E-excuse me? Is t-this yours?" Came a quiet voice from beside him.

Out in front of him, held in the outstretched hand of his new guardian angel, which he had almost bulldozed earlier, was his half-brick piece of crap from the stone-age phone. Mother of All, he could have kissed this girl for finding it for him. But before he could manage more than a 'thank you', he watched as his bus took off down the road towards the highway and he went chasing after it out of habit.

He gave up after a few meters and trudged back to the terminal to wait for the next bus and an angry call from his Ma.

This day fuckin' sucked.

* * *

… Yeah, this thing's making a comeback after I got rid of it (and most of my other Naruto stuff) when I tried to quit the fandom. But I've come to grudgingly accept my love-hate feeling for this series and the fact that I can't abandon these useless characters who happen to be my favourites. If their creator won't give them any love, then I will.


	2. Sharpie Marker Fumes for the Soul

**02**

 **Sharpie Marker Fumes for the Soul.**

* * *

She watched from the shadows as the boy from earlier grumbled and cursed while dragging his steel cap toed boots across the pavement as he headed back the way he came, not even looking twice as he passed Artists Alley again. Relieved that there was not one around to watch her work, Hinata went back to where she had dumped her stuff to finish her latest piece.

"They have tagged this one too." Shino said from the far side of Artists Alley, looking at the poster of Sun Goddess Amaterasu and the rising sun.

From her place in the middle of the alley, Hinata sighed. It was a little upsetting that whoever had gone over her posters hadn't done anything more than a basic tag. She was not foolish enough to think that her art wouldn't eventually be covered, but she was kind of hoping that there would be something beautiful and full of love and dedication over her wheatpaste posters.

In her view, art was equal parts creation and destruction. A piece would one day be destroyed to make way for another one and that one in turn would be covered too. Each piece that went up on this wall had its own beauty to it, even if she didn't understand the meaning or feelings behind each individual piece.

So it sort of felt like a slap in the face to discover that someone out there hadn't even thought her piece was worthy enough to be fully covered. Well, more like a dozen slaps to her face, since over the past few weeks, she had discovered that all her other Sun Goddess posters had been tagged with the same little red... blob? Wisp? No one had seen it before her posters went up nearly two years ago. This must be the work of some one new to the street art scene. Someone that must have a bone to pick with her. Or the themes of her art.

Good thing she and Shino came to Artists Alley prepared this time.

Slathering the section of wall she had chosen with some homemade paste she kept sealed in an old paint can, Hinata made quick progress on putting up the first of her newest set of posters; a rabbit with a hammer sitting in the crescent moon, surrounded by clouds. The Moon Goddess Yumigami. Covering the poster in a layer of paste, it almost seemed to glow from the light it reflected from the streetlamps.

Further down the alley, she could hear the hiss of Shino's spray cans as he started to cover her old poster and the tag.

Packing up her tools of the trade and making her way to him, she stood back to watch his latest idea come to life before her eyes.

Spray paint was not his usual medium, so his lines were heavy and dripped every so often from the thickness of the paint. But as the saying goes, practice makes perfect, and what better place to practice on than her vandalised artwork.

Silver lines interconnected to form a distorted web. The silhouette of a spider sitting at the centre, with its purple eyes staring out at the two of them, was both creepy and exciting.

It amazed her how his art always had that impression that it was watching whoever was looking at it, almost like it was alive. It was the reason she has stuck his spider and bat stickers on anything she didn't want her little sister and cousin to go through. Sometimes they could be too nosy for their own good.

The last thing she needed at the moment was for her father to find out the truth about her "community art projects". He would definitely put her on a curfew and order Neji to chaperone her everywhere if news got out that she was vandalising the city in her free time.

Assuming she wasn't locked up for defacing public space. As much as father loved her, he probably wouldn't bail her out of jail. The law existed for a reason and those who broke it should be punished accordingly, he would always tell her as a child, partly to instil a sense of right and wrong, and partly to scare her to remain on the right side of the law. He was a very well-known and successful prosecutor after all.

And it had worked. Up until she met Sai for the first time.

Two and a half years ago, she wouldn't have dreamed of doing anything that was even remotely related to criminal activity. Heck, she wouldn't even jaywalk a street that was deserted. But then Sai, a friend of Lee, who was the self-proclaimed eternal rival of Neji, had seen her drawing in her sketchbook and had asked to see it.

Hinata had never dreamed of seriously pursuing anything art related. Flower pressing, origami and drawing were just fun little stress relievers from her busy school life. But the day that Sai had given her a spray can and brought her to this very alley, something had clicked the instant she brought the nozzle up to the painted brickwork and let the first few lines flow from the can.

Her first tag, haphazard and rather sloppy, had haunted her vision for days after it was done, and was covered just as quick when she went to go see it. A poster, almost as tall as her and depicting a vector image of the former Emperor of Kaze with his eyes blacked out, had been pasted to the wall, covering any evidence that her tag had ever existed. And it had excited her.

She, Hinata Hyūga, had done an act of vandalism and had gotten away with it!

It was all strange to her in the beginning. The rush of giddiness she would get after leaving a tag somewhere and having not been caught was addictive and wonderful. Before it all, she had not felt so good about anything for such a long time.

Maybe it was why Ms. Yuhi hadn't reported her to the police yet. She was a stickler for the law as much as her father was, and had tried to reign in her creative projects to something more acceptable like canvases and sketchbooks. But she relented somewhat after watching her work on her first poster in Sai's brother's studio. Hinata had told her that she was planning on sticking it up in Mizu Market Street later that week, with the help of the brothers and another girl who went by the tag 10X2.

She was sure that Ms. Yuhi had seen the light in her eyes, how happy she was, as she dragged the marker across the paper, letting the lines flow into one another and form the first ever Sun Goddess poster. There couldn't be another reason why she told her father she was getting better, why the sessions with her could be reduced to once a fortnight and had kept her silence in regards to her new hobby, in exchange for meeting with another one of her clients.

Hinata was surprised to see that Shino was the one she had been arranged to meet. They shared a few classes at school and knew enough about each other to be acquaintances. She never would have picked him to be in a similar situation to her.

Nor would she have ever expected him to wind up as her partner in crime just a few short weeks later from that fateful meeting. Life had a funny way of working sometimes.

Shino stepped back next to her and looked at his work, deep in thought. The elaborate spider stared back at the two of them, watching, waiting for the next layer of paint.

* * *

Even after months of thinking about this thing, I still have no idea where exactly I want it to go. Still, these idiots are fun to write about when they're not in mission mode. Oh canon, why have you made them all so unimportant and difficult to write about?


	3. Splat goes the Paint Bug

**03**

 **Splat goes the Paint Bug.**

* * *

Standing back next to Hinata, Shino looked over his piece with scrutiny. He was far from done, but for the moment, he was at a loss of what to do with it.

Ever since the beginning of this night time activity, he had never particularly liked using spray cans for his art. He couldn't really understand why, but he and cans just didn't click.

It didn't stop him from trying anyway.

And it would be the only way to draw _them_ out of hiding. Nearly four years on the streets and he hasn't seen hide nor hair of the pair that had gotten him out here to begin with.

He didn't even get to say 'Thank you' when the boys chucked him a marker and a can of paint and practically dragged him along to go scrawl on the back wall of the library. What was supposed to be fun for them turned out to be a much needed distraction for him. Yeah, the first set of scuttle bugs he drew on the wall were more like black blobs with thorns sticking out of them, and he was more than grateful when city council came around the repaint the wall for the umpteenth time that year, but thanks to those two, he discovered something wonderful.

The purple eyes of the Spider Queen seemed to glare at him accusingly. Shino couldn't help but think that that would be how his father would look if he ever found out about this.

It was quite surprising that he didn't know already. His father was one of the top detectives in the city, renown for tracking down the slickest of criminals, yet he seemed unable to keep tabs on his own son. But to be fair, his father had told him everything that he could when asked, so Shino knew a fair few things about hiding himself and any evidence related to a crime.

Hmm. That made him sound like some underworld thug with blood on his hands. Well, murder and vandalism could have similar jail time sentences, depending on the severity of the acts themselves.

His father most likely wouldn't leave him to rot in prison for too long. He may eat, breathe and live by the law, but he wouldn't condemn a child to a life behind bars, and certainly not if the person was his youngest son and last living family member...

Dwelling on thoughts of his shrinking family was not going to do him any good. Not back then, and certainly not now.

Stepping towards the painting, Shino added a few more black lines before swapping his black can for a dark grey one. He could get started on the highlights tonight and maybe he could get some finer details done too before he had to run off to beat his father home.

Hinata rummaged through their shared backpack. She's been experimenting with paint on her posters lately, some of them working quite nicely, some of them... not so much. Adding while and ice blue snowflakes around Itegami's poster helped add to the impression that the giant bull was brewing up a massive blizzard, while painting flowers and vines around the Hanagami triplets had sort of distracted the viewer from the gorilla brothers.

Shino wondered what Hinata was planning for Yumigami tonight.

The pair worked in silence for nearly an hour before calling it quits because of a police patrol car coming through the neighbourhood. It was always a wonder how Shin knew when patrols were about to go through an area, but they were grateful none the less. He wouldn't warn them if he didn't like them.

They packed their stuff and left quickly, not wanting to be caught in a compromising situation. Shin had gone so far as to identify the patrolling officer. Constable Itachi Uchiha was not a real threat to any of the artists who came around to paint in the alley as he hardly ever pursued them. Apparently he was more interested in watching them do their art. But, as many others would say, a cop is a cop, so steering clear of all of them was the best option.

It was a good thing he has never told anyone among the crews who he was related to, let alone his real name.

The walk to the station is made slow by the night crowd, people either off to their second or third job or heading out to the clubs and pubs for a good drink after a hard day's work. This section of the city was the gateway to the industrial area that lay to the east, so the general populace were tradesmen and tech school students. Anyone sporting a suit and tie in this area would stick out like a sore thumb and probably get rolled for their wallet.

Hence the need to borrow some of his cousin's high-vis work clothes and old work uniforms. Not many people would look twice at a painter out here now that there were more building popping up in the area.

They part ways at the station; Hinata catching the east bound train while he caught the south. For the first time in a week he's actually feeling tired enough that he just might be able to get a decent night's sleep.

The train Shino had boarded was one of the oldest ones of the fleet. Almost every seat had its cloth covering ripped and patched, the lights flickered every so often and every inch of the car's interior was littered with tags and stickers. He found one of his third generation kikaichu stickers right next to the information sticker above the car door that denoted the penalties for vandalising public transport. Strange. He didn't remember putting one up there. He also didn't remember painting a red dot on its back either.

Wait a minute.

He got up to take a closer look at his sticker and the mess of marker and paint it sat on top of. Barely visible because of the black and blue paint covering it was a tag in red. An inverted triangle encompassed by a circle.

Interesting. Someone out there doesn't like his work either.

Pulling out his phone from his pocket, he took a photo of it and mailed it off to Shin and Sai. The brothers had said that there were some new writers in the city that didn't have much respect for the current crews. 10X2 had had her panda paintings tagged recently, but she never did describe the tag. If it didn't match the tags on his and Hinata's pieces, then there were probably more than 'just a few' newcomers that were out there. And it seemed a bit too coincidental that the colours on this pseudo-religious symbol matched the little red cloud that covered Amaterasu perfectly.

Even if there were more than a handful of them, Shin and Sai were usually pretty good at holding their own when it came to educating new brats about respect. Based on the quality of the tag, this person in particular was either very young, or new to the streets, or both. It wouldn't be too hard for them to straighten out the little can kicker.

But if this person was making a threat against them all, they'd have to lay low for a while.

It wouldn't be the first time that writers left the streets because of threats against them. The last time someone went around assaulting taggers was over three years ago, leaving four kids in ICU. Unfortunately for them, their attacker was never caught. His father considered it one of his greatest failures as a detective.

Word travelled like lighting on the streets, and in less than a day, everyone had faded out of existence. It was quite sad really, losing almost everyone close to him again through an event that was beyond his control. He hasn't been able to speak to half of them since then.

The automated, droning voice that announced the station line up over the PA system made Shino realise just in time that his stop was coming up. Grabbing his backpack, he slipped through the doors as soon as they opened up enough for him to squeeze through and took to the stairs three at a time all the way up to the concourse. If he was lucky he might have another hour before his father returned home from his shift. It would be just enough time to rush through his nightly routine and pretend that he had been home the entire time and not gallivanting around the city streets with his best friend and a bag full of spray cans.

And hopefully his father wouldn't find out that they had cut their P.E class for their 'community art project' otherwise he'll never hear the end of it.

* * *

Something might come of this one day…


End file.
